Review: 'The Monkey' is a horror movie dripping in blood and humorous irony, but the mix doesn't always hold together
If the “Saw” movies kept their gore but were repurposed as farcical comedies, they might look a lot like “The Monkey,” in which writer-director Osgood Perkins reveals his funny bone — and a lot of other bones, blood and viscera as well.
Freely adapted from a Stephen King short story, “The Monkey” starts with a frantic pilot (Adam Scott, in an unnerving cameo) entering a pawn shop trying to unload a wind-up monkey that plays a drum. Before the pilot can make a deal, the monkey starts banging on its drum — and when it stops, something awful happens.
The action then moves to the pilot’s sons, twin brothers Bill and Hal (played as teens by Christian Convery). The twins share a mutual animosity, as Bill bullies Hal and blames Hal for their dad leaving their mom, Lois (Tatiana Maslany). The boys start exploring the stuff Dad left behind, and find a massive hatbox that contains a drumming wind-up monkey.
It doesn’t take long to discover the monkey’s secret: When it finishes playing its drum, someone nearby dies horribly. The monkey also can’t be directed to killing a specific person (“it doesn’t take requests,” young Hal says at one point). So, after some gruesome deaths — which Perkins presents with the complex absurdity of a Rube Goldberg contraption — the boys decide to throw the monkey down the deepest well they can find.
Move forward 25 years, to the present day, and the adult Hal (now played by Theo James) lives a solitary life, avoiding contact with his twin and his son, Petey (Colin O’Brien). On his one week of the year when he has custody, Hal and Petey find their theme park plans upended when the monkey resurfaces — as does Bill.
Perkins, the guy behind last year’s creepy “Longlegs,” seems to be having lots of fun devising clever ways for characters to die in freakish and gruesome ways. He also features a fair share of oddballs, including the twins’ brash Aunt Ida (Sarah Levy, from “Schitt’s Creek”), a fumbling priest (Nicco Del Rio), and Petey’s self-help guru stepdad (Elijah Wood).
But Perkins doesn’t maintain a consistent tone between the blood-splattered hilarity and the more complicated handling of Hal’s emotional state, and the movie suffers for it. Perkins is a seriously good director, but he needs to work on balancing the serious with the silly.
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‘The Monkey’
★★1/2
Opens Friday, February 21, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violent content, gore, language throughout and some sexual references. Running time: 98 minutes.